Politics
Google, GE team up on Capitol Hill for green subsidies
By: Daniel Whitten and Lorraine Woellert
Bloomberg
February 18, 2009
General Electric Co. and Google Inc. are teaming up in Washington this week in support of policies that would encourage the use of clean-energy products — that they could supply.
The companies are pressing policymakers to back new energy standards as President Obama signed a $787 billion economic stimulus measure Tuesday that includes at least $61 billion in funding for so-called clean-energy projects. GE, which has spent more money on U.S. lobbying over the past decade than any other company, is developing and marketing technologies such as wind turbines and smart electricity meters, while Google is working on energy-related communication services.
GE, the world’s biggest maker of power-generation equipment, would supply the smart meters and other products to cut U.S. household energy use by as much as 8 percent, and Google would tell consumers about potential energy savings, said Robert Gilligan, GE’s vice president for transmission and distribution.
“We are really good at the operation side, and they are really good at information management and communicating,” Gilligan said in an interview. “If we want to enable consumers to better manage their electricity, potentially Google could be helpful in determining how we deliver information to consumers so that they can actually do something with it.”
The market for smart meters and the software that goes with it may be $12 billion over five years, Gilligan said. Meters are capable of cutting off electricity to water heaters in homes during the day when the water isn’t needed. The meters also could relay information over a cell phone or the Internet to consumers about power use.
GE hopes to sell more than 3 million smart meters this year, Gilligan said.
The stimulus package includes $4.5 billion in smart-grid spending, including money for demonstration projects that would be distributed by the Energy Department. Gilligan said that San Francisco, San Diego and Baltimore could be good cities for demonstration programs, because they have already started building smart-grid systems.
Google, owner of the most popular search engine, is a big power user and could benefit from selling efficiency-communications products, Gilligan said.
The company, which drew 97 percent of its revenue last year from Internet search-engine advertising, said Feb. 9 on its blog that it was testing a product called Google PowerMeter to allow consumers to track their energy use.
The companies are pressing policymakers to back new energy standards as President Obama signed a $787 billion economic stimulus measure Tuesday that includes at least $61 billion in funding for so-called clean-energy projects. GE, which has spent more money on U.S. lobbying over the past decade than any other company, is developing and marketing technologies such as wind turbines and smart electricity meters, while Google is working on energy-related communication services.
GE, the world’s biggest maker of power-generation equipment, would supply the smart meters and other products to cut U.S. household energy use by as much as 8 percent, and Google would tell consumers about potential energy savings, said Robert Gilligan, GE’s vice president for transmission and distribution.
“We are really good at the operation side, and they are really good at information management and communicating,” Gilligan said in an interview. “If we want to enable consumers to better manage their electricity, potentially Google could be helpful in determining how we deliver information to consumers so that they can actually do something with it.”
The market for smart meters and the software that goes with it may be $12 billion over five years, Gilligan said. Meters are capable of cutting off electricity to water heaters in homes during the day when the water isn’t needed. The meters also could relay information over a cell phone or the Internet to consumers about power use.
GE hopes to sell more than 3 million smart meters this year, Gilligan said.
The stimulus package includes $4.5 billion in smart-grid spending, including money for demonstration projects that would be distributed by the Energy Department. Gilligan said that San Francisco, San Diego and Baltimore could be good cities for demonstration programs, because they have already started building smart-grid systems.
Google, owner of the most popular search engine, is a big power user and could benefit from selling efficiency-communications products, Gilligan said.
The company, which drew 97 percent of its revenue last year from Internet search-engine advertising, said Feb. 9 on its blog that it was testing a product called Google PowerMeter to allow consumers to track their energy use.
